The Road Less Traveled : The Class 6 Exam

After months of work and obsessing over the test, the Class 6 exam had finally arrived. Or, to be more precise, The Secondary School Entrance Exam. When I was assigned to teach in a primary school in Tonga by the Peace Corps, I never thought I would have to teach to a test. That is something we do in the US, but surely I thought, in a small village on the other side of the world, there would be less pressure on standardized testing. As has usually proven to be the case this past year, my assumptions were wrong.

While I have mentioned the exam often in this blog, I believe a refresher course is in order. The Class 6 exam is a big deal. With a few exceptions, almost every single Class 6 student (roughly the equivalent of 6^th grade) takes 4 exams – English, Science, Math, and Tongan – created by the Ministry of Education. The exam has two functions. The first is to determine whether the student will graduate from primary school and attend high school next year. This is a real concern as kids are often forced to repeat Class 6 – 4 out of 9 of my students are such repeaters. The second function is to decide which high school the student will attend the next year. No student is forced to go to any one school by the Ministry but the choices available to them depend on their scores.

The tests each consist of 100 points and the scores are added up into a total possible score of 400. To demonstrate how low the scores often are, the cumulative score to attend the best high school in Tonga, Tonga High School located on the main island, is 280. The average score to attend Vava’u High School, the best and only government high school in Vava’u, is usually around 240, or an average of 60% on each test. The students who do not receive these scores will often go to the high school that is run by their church, such as Mailifahi for the Wesleyans or Saineha for the Mormons, and these scores vary but they can be much lower than the scores of the government schools. Further, it is almost impossible to repeat Class 6 twice. No matter what your scores are in year two, you are going to high school.

With that behind us, the exam dominates the teaching of Class 6 for the entire year, but becomes an obsession over the last few months before the test in October. My Class 6 teacher, Paea, hds given the kids a practice test every day since July, and I have similarly had to focus more on test taking skills and test preparation than I would have otherwise liked too. My school is actually more relaxed than most, as many schools force their Class 6 students to attend test prep classes before school, after school, and during the holiday breaks. Though my school did not make our students attend an extra class, possibly because of the small size of our Class 6 – 9 students – or the fact that my principal is somewhat removed from the exam as the Class 1 and 2 teacher, Paea and I did go into school during the break two weeks ago for some last minute test prep.

Last week, the exam finally arrived. On Monday, we spent the morning preparing one of the classrooms for the exam. We moved the best desks into the room and covered all of the walls with white sheets so that the kids could not read the school posters hanging on the walls. After a ministry official came by and approved of our “test-taking center” we finished school early and let the kids relax for the rest of the day. The tests is structured over two days, with this years test being English on Tuesday morning, Science in the afternoon, and Math Wednesday morning with Tongan in the afternoon.

During the actual exams, all I have to do is wait. In order to reduce cheating, the principals and some teachers go to other schools to supervise the exams. At our schools, Paea’s brother and another volunteer’s principal were the supervisors so it made for a very stress free environment. While the kids were taking the tests, from 10 to 11:30 and 2 to 3:30, many of the parents and random people from the village walked over to the school to wait around for the kids to finish. The woman sat under a tree and talked, while the men turned my classroom into a kava drinking circle, as I was highly encouraged to sit with them for several hours drinking kava while waiting for kids to finish their exams. There were two reasons, however why the people from the village came to the school. The first is that they are genuinely interested in how the kids do, but the second and most obvious reason is that there is always a ton of food at the school during the exams and they wanted to eat.

Every school does their feast a little differently, but at my school two different parents of class 6 students volunteered to provide the food for the lunches in between the tests for the students and the teachers. The food is meant as a reward for the students and a thank you for the teachers. The feast had everything I believe my readers have come to expect from Tongan feasts, except at this feast it was only the teachers, students, and church ministers who sat down and ate. Of course, there were plenty of fakamalos (thank you speeches) from the parents and teachers, and I even gave one after the English exam. I kept it fairly simple, thanking the parents for the food, my teachers for their help, the students for their hard work and told my students how much I will miss them next year. I will say, however, that after having to make a speech in another language, I don’t think public speaking in English will be as nerve wracking in the future. After we finished eating, all the parents and other villagers sat down and finished all that was left of the food, ensuring that everything was properly devoured.

After every test, each of my students assured me that the tests were easy. I would be reassured by this, but after every practice tests they have ever taken in English or any other subject, they have proudly announced the test to be easy while heir actual scores were not quite as high as their confidence was. We won’t receive the scores for several months, as they have to be shipped to the main island to be scored, but I am proud of my kids and the work they put in this year. Now, however, is an interesting time in the school year. From now until schools ends in the first week of December, nothing happens in school. Very few classes are taught, and instead kids play rugby and practice their cultural dances. The only comparison I can make is to ask you to imagine a senior in high school taking the AP Exam and then spending the last month of that class watching movies. Further, imagine if after the AP exam, those classroom dynamics were replicated not only by that one senior class but also by the entire school, grades K through 12. That is what school is like in Tonga after the Class 6 exam, and it will certainly be an interesting and relaxed next two months.

Thank you for reading. After I uploaded last weeks post, the owner of the whale operator I swam with emailed me the pictures our guide took. They are absolutely stunning and are below. I hope you enjoy.